What does it mean to bear witness to colonial violence without reproducing the very extractive logics one seeks to critique? In Earthmoving: Extractivism, War, and Visuality in Northern Kurdistan, Eray Çaylı examines how landscapes, artistic practices, and academic work intersect with/intervene in histories of colonial violence, environmental destruction, and resistance. This review explores how the book challenges conventional approaches to testimony, memory, and scholarship, asking how we might relate differently to land, people, and the work of remembering.

Earthmoving: extractivism, war, and visuality in Nothern Kurdistan by Eray Çaylı, Austin, University of Texas Press, 2025, 199 pp., 65$ (hardback), ISBN 978-1-4773-3277-1

Read the full article here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01419870.2026.2640451